


Becoming Lady Capulet

by drcalvin



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Character Study, Childbirth, Coming-of-age, Extramarital Affairs (mentioned), F/M, Gen, Sexism, Verona kind of sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 03:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drcalvin/pseuds/drcalvin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Julia's mother, Capulet's wife, enemy of the Montagues. </p><p>But where did the woman known only as Lady Capulet come from, and where did she wish to go? Dreams, ego, marriage and childbirth; the story before a story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Becoming Lady Capulet

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted on Tumblr, but has since then been expanded to almost twice the size. Also got a much needed beta from the wonderful Miss Morland!
> 
> This story is also based on Janza Kata's Lady Capulet from the Operettszínház version of the Romeo et Juliette musical

She used to be the most beautiful girl at every ball. The night she made her debut, two young bravos both swore to kill themselves unless she graced them with a kiss. Only one went through with it in the end, but he had problems with his drink anyway. And was it not terribly romantic?

Her mother found all the dazzle and the gaiety terrible, preferring her prayers and dreary garden work. She, however, found it intoxicating. She was young, she was lovely, and with every party, every teasing new dress, she took one more step away from her gilded cage.

Her father still held the keys to the fetters tying her down, but he was offering it to the highest bidder now. He was trying to find her a decent husband, and though she made certain to give some girlish complaints, coquetted a bit with demurely lowered eyes, the truth was that she could not wait. For the freedom, for the change, for the handsome young men who made her mouth water and caused a tingle between her legs.

Her favorite brother – so handsome and so strong, the decorated soldier, the pride of the family – hovered behind her at the feasts. He protected her honor (though she wished, sometimes, that he would fail at his post. Some of those lissom, duel-prone youths…) and he told her all about what men and women did together. 

Perhaps she found it unfair sometimes, when he bragged about the brothels he had visited and the succulent young girls he had tried. Perhaps she was tempted too, at stories of shy little creatures happy to lick and worship and beg for his strength. She wanted it too, the power and the right. She wanted everything.

But he had fought, to defend the honor of their family and the name of their city; the freedom of the night was his due. The freedom of a man… When he drank too heavily and his snarls grew dark, his temper shorter with every passing years, she’d sometimes recall the brother from before. 

The little boy who laughed and dreamed, who blushed at the pretty girls bending just so to reach something – that, she thought with the wisdom of the young, must be the price of being a man. Battle and pride, which had given him a bitter twist to his mouth when he spoke of lands he’d seen and the fellows who had died with him.

Perhaps that was something she could do without. Yes, a husband was all she needed. She would be faithful and collected, his safe haven and his harbor, but never forgetting the beauty that was his due. As well as the freedom of the night? And he would shower her in dresses and in kisses, worship with desire and with gold.

* * *

When she saw the image of her husband, she knew not quite what to feel. He was handsome, not too misshapen in any way. But… 

He looked kind, her mother said. He was rich, her father chuckled. He was proud, but fair, one of her distant relatives who had been to Verona knew to tell. Also, his gardens were very fine. A good match, all agreed.

She smiled at them, and thanked her father, and begged her mother for a prettier dress and tried – she did, she did – to feel exhilaration for his noble brow and straight shoulders and all the flattering details of the portrait. She tried.

"A milksop," her brother sneered, “but that should fit you. Break him in properly and you’ll have something to ride, even if he’ll go lame too fast for your tastes." 

She screeched at him, scratched his face and pulled his hair; he slapped her so that her head spun, but she was grateful to him even so – at least once the swelling went down.

Lord Capulet was _her_ husband, and she would defend him to the death. She felt her blood rush and her smile grow sharp at the thought, and the profile in the portrait looked far more noble every time she studied it. When she glared at her brother over the dinner table, recalling his mocking laughter, she knew she would be able to desire her lord properly now.

She would become the finest wife, gorgeous and witty. She would give him half a dozen strapping sons and three lovely daughters, and he would love her more with every child.

* * *

She was a queen when she stepped out of her carriage; her blonde hair spun like gold, her bosom high and round, her skin pale and sweet almost without the help of any powder. And he saw her (oh Lord, he was short) and he stared in stupefaction (was he already graying?) and then he made the most elegant bow before her and took her hand in his, as if it were fragile glass. 

He called her 'My lady'; she graced him with a smile and he nearly swooned – he was her husband, and in that moment, she felt a swell of love. Perhaps only because he was a mirror to her beauty, but she would become properly his. The freedom of a lady would be hers and on their wedding night… 

Her smile was diamonds and his eyes worshipful. Never mind priests or oaths; in that moment, she became Lady Capulet with all her soul.

* * *

Having a man was wonderful. She was the belle of each ball; at his arm she overflowed with life and beguiled with beauty. She was the Lady Capulet, and her joy made her shine. At last she was heard! At last, she was! For that alone, she'd have loved her husband, but he desired her and cherished her so wildly that it was easy to reply in kind.

Waiting for a child was harder. 

The pregnancy soon weighed her down; it shut her in and left her in the company of old women and nagging nurses, whose lined faces and saggy breasts filled her with horror. Bitterness had scrunched their faces into dried prunes, the joy of youth long forgotten. Only envy twisted their mouths, envy at her smiles and at her admirers. It whispered with their tongues when she dared to go dancing, it scolded as she returned late from excursions, with sweat staining her brow.

Of course she would not become one of them. She had a wet-nurse waiting, one of those round-faced, wide-hipped widows who seemed to have been built to be milked by gawping children and to cheerfully wipe the dirt off them afterward. She was a good choice, this woman, came from healthy stock. On her milk a son would grow tall and powerful, and as he'd mature into a proper lord, he would be taught to admire and obey his radiant mother.

When that summer came, she suffered. Though she tried at first, feasts and balls were not to her taste this year. Not with swollen feet and dizzy spells and the added weight which made any little heat unbearable like the plague. Soon, the child would come, soon her freedom would return... but why did it take so long?

Nurse held her hand and wiped her brow. Nurse at least shooed away the old hags, and dried her tears when she cried for her husband and her slim waist – both of which were conspicuously missing as the date of birth drew near. 

It was Nurse and the least prune-like of the old women who were with her when it began. The rest of them joined her too, the mousy grandmothers scurrying around the Capulet house, when the hours grew long. They joined and prayed and held vigil, while her body worked and worked, driven beyond all endurance. And still the child would not come!

She remembered little but pain of those final hours, pain and thirst and at last ungentle hands that wrenched and twisted -- she recalled little, but she hated it all. When it was over, when she lay there in filth and sweat and the stench of weakness, she could not resist hating the squalling child as well. Only for a moment, only a fleeting thought, but she had to push it away instantly, demand water and washing -- oh God, if her husband were to see her now! Exhaustion weighted down her limbs and she cried in pain and humiliation as they washed her. She cried when she held the babe too, and now they cooed and coddled her. Now, the old hens approved! 

It was not a son.

When autumn was coldest, while the daughter grew fat and happy on the nurse’s milk, she was inspected by a foreign doctor, brought there by the weight of gold. He felt where he should not feel, he smelled her and prodded her, and at last he delivered the verdict: there was unlikely to ever be born a Lord Capulet from her loins. 

She smiled at him (she was still slim) and thanked him (her bosom was still high), she had him paid twice the promised amount (there was no son) and sent quickly, but always politely, on his way again (there'd never be a son).

Her husband suspected the verdict, despite the care she'd taken with the doctor. He thought to comfort her, but she had prepared: flower-scents and ambergris, the gauzy dress and a Florentine corset, pearls and rouge adorning her face. 

They never spoke of the matter again and he made no move to look for another wife. The girl was at least cheerful and healthy, charming him with her giggles. She had what looked like the beginning of wide, womanish hips and was the very image of health. A sweet child, all who saw her said, and Lady Capulet simpered and thanked them as was expected. Her sweet, adorable little girl. 

If her daughter was sweetness and Nurse's shadow full of cheerful warmth, Lady Capulet was beautiful.

Throughout the year, into the next, she was the most lovely woman at every ball. And she visited them all. She danced with her husband, she danced with blushing boys and chortling old gentlemen, who could not take their eyes off her, either sort. Her perfumes were exotic and her dresses worth their weight in gold. In the eyes of all women, she read hatred, and she smiled back at them, their envy making her more gorgeous in comparison. She smiled, kindly, at the plump wife of Montague who could not shut up about her son, conversed politely with the faded flowers trying to paint over their graying hair, and smiled with sweet pity at the thrice-blessed Lady Escalus, whose powder could never quite cover the pockmarks on her cheeks. 

She had worked as hard for her beauty as any swordsman for his strong arm, and now it worked for her in turn. That glorious smile, her still youthful bosom, her waist so girlish and slim – it earned her love, jealousy and power with every dance she spun. The only thing it could not grant was peace. 

She still loved her husband and made certain to keep his love as well. But she could see it wither away already: the gazes that lingered too short, before drifting away from her brightness. Not so often to other women, no, but simply back to his world: Courts and politics, business letters he handled as if they came drenched in perfume and in lust. The peace and joking he affected with his rivals, the violence he handed out in the dark – to younger men, stronger men, taller and more handsome men, all willing to fight for their lord. Men like her brother. They would bleed for him, their smiles would turn from childhood's easy laughter into the mocking things stained with violence. 

Men whose sharp swords and sharper grins would follow her only so far, before they demanded honest pay for their bloody work...

Was it then so bad, to let her hands linger a little too long on the most handsome, to let her gaze grow too heated beneath the kohl? To promise – and to deliver? From _that_ she was spared, at least, from the embarrassment and torture of that dirty room she was forever safe. If the price was her sons, then she had paid the full measure already!

Why should she not use her beauty to take a little territory in his world of men? What possible reason was it to refrain, now that she was saved from that weakness of women? Her breasts would never again sag with milk, her flesh would not stretch and tear. 

So she tasted; she enjoyed. Careful, she was, but so starved for the juice of these forbidden fruits. It gave her forgetfulness in the clammy nights when worries kept her up; it was a balm against the shadows of wrinkles she thought to see every morning in the mirror. It made her world-wise and clever, this fumbling in the night! Her jokes grew sharper in the privacy of her rooms, the polite giggles of her ladies becoming shocked gasps – tiny, but honest, mingling reluctance and awe. 

They kept her beauty fresh, the young men she teased (and she teased far more than she tasted), and her beauty kept Capulet's name proud. And was that not her duty?


End file.
